Blizzard
by Cream of the Ice
Summary: Something has awoken on Berk, something terrible. Can Hiccup solve this, or is it already too late?
1. Incipiens

Hiccup didn't remember what he was doing on the far side of the island. He guessed that he and Toothless had simply landed there after their daily flying. At that point in time, it didn't seem to matter.

Berk was especially cold today, and Hiccup was pretty sure the windchill was worse on the island than in the air, Toothless crooned in alert. Hiccup turned his head to face the sound of crunching leaves.

At first, all he was able to make out was the lithe outline of a person. It looked to be about Hiccups age, somehow he knew it was a boy. Toothless growled territorially, the way he did when another dragon came too close to Hiccup.

Hiccup looked over at his companion.

"What is it, bud?" Toothless looked at his owner, and gestured for him to look closer. Hiccup squinted, and saw the glint of sunlight on black scales. Hiccup followed the glint, and a shadow fell on his face. This figure was headed towards the cliffside.

"Avic, wait!" Another voice, this one distinctively younger and feminine, rang out from the distance. "Avic, please come back!"

The wind got stronger, Hiccup jumped onto Toothless' back. "C'mon."

Toothless' wings carried them directly to the edge, easily beating the boy. Only then did he get a good look at the boy called Avic.

He was easily a year or so older than Hiccup, with long russet-brown hair. His large gray eyes were wide and dreamy, as if hypnotized. He walked along swiftly and silently. Clutched in his pale hands, there was a tiny white dragon Hiccup was not familiar with.

"Avic, please come back!" The little girl was chasing him, pleading. If Avic heard her or not, he didn't say. He didn't say anything.

"Avic, buddy, you alright?" Avic walked past Hiccup and Toothless. He stood at the edge, as if waiting for something.

The tiny white dragon cooed softly, and took flight. Hiccup watched as Avic released the thing. "Avic?"

Hiccup caught a glimpse of the telltale streaks on Avic's cheeks. Hiccup walked up to the boy slowly. Avic turned his back to the cliff and smiled softly at Hiccup.

Hiccup realized a second too late what was to happen next. Avic spread his arms and leaned back.

He screamed as he saw the boy plunge to the waiting rocky outcrops below. Toothless pulled Hiccup back by the vest, but there was no hiding the slow outflow of crimson spreading through the icy water.

"Avic?" Another voice, one Hiccup recognized as a grown up. It must've been his father, Magnus. "Avic?"

Hiccup hung his head, willing to block it all out. Magnus had made his way to the cliffside. "Hiccup, have you seen-"

He looked down. He saw the blood, and face-down form of the boy floating in the waves.

"My boy..." Magnus whispered over his daughters sobs. "M-MY... B-O-Y-Y-Y!"

Toothless wrapped a wing around Hiccup, shielding him from the scene. None of them noticed the black-headed boy standing in a nearby tree-branch.


	2. Ardens

It was unlike anything the people of Berk had ever seen.

They were used to their own dying in battle, but never something like this. Suicide was simply not something anyone ever did. Ever.

Hiccup's mind could only reel as Stoick the Vast and twelve other village men shove the ship off into the ocean, carrying what was left of Avic into the distance.

The event played over and over in Hiccup's mind. The trance Avic was in, the bone-white dragon, the way the boy smiled as he fell to his death. Hiccup had seen everything, up to and including Magnus carting his son's pale body home in his arms, shivering at the gaping hole in Avic's stomach where an outcrop had impaled him.

The ghostly smile had frozen on the boy's face in his death. His eyes remained wide and listless.

Stoick was deeply troubled by this event. What could a chief do for a situation like this? Hiccup's mind was racing. Where have I seen that dragon before?

He mulled over it in the hours following the funeral. He must've combed the Book of Dragons twenty times. No dragon in the book matched the white one.

He'd poured over the pages again and again. He was just on his twelfth skim when he heard a knock at his bedroom door. Toothless, who'd been curled up despondently on his rug, perked up his ears.

"It's open."

Magnus and his wife Gomna entered, both their faces flushed and trembling. Magnus held a small box in his shaking hands. Hiccup mentally cursed himself, he'd forgotten about the Burning Ceremony.

It was custom in Berk for a dead child's favorite toy to be burned if they die, a tradition that was rather outdated because older children dying was so rare. They weren't allowed in battle, and the village healer was a powerful woman. She had an herb or a root or a stone for every illness in the book, and she saved every ill villager who came to her, especially children.

She'd felt a strange desire to save children after her own son died from consuming a poisonous mushroom a few years ago. Hiccup still shuddered at the memory of the boy, bordering manhood, convulsing on the healer's floor, crimson-colored vomit soaking his tunic.

Hiccup had selected a toy sword for his Burning.

But, she'd been powerless to save Avic. It seemed rather pointless to try, anyway, the boy'd been bled white. As the chief's son, it was his duty to pick the toy they would burn publicly, the rest would ether be thrown out or given away.

"Well, Hiccup," Gomna whispered in a tear-strained choke. "Here's everything."

"Thank you, Gomna." Hiccup whispered solemnly. "Magnus, Gomna, I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you, Hiccup." And with that, the two left.

Hiccup put his book aside and set to work. He mulled through the contents of the box anxiously. A stuffed dragon? Too taboo for their new relationship with the dragons. A journal? Too personal. A picture book?

Wait.

There was a white dragon under this story. Identical to the one Avic was holding. The version of the Norse language was a difficult to read, being outdated, and he could translate a few words.

"A...Astrom." Hiccup read. "Astrom's Snowflake." Was that the dragons name?

"Hey, buddy?" Toothless perked up his ears. "Have you seen this dragon before?" He held out the book to his friend, who cocked his leathery head in curiosity.

Toothless sniffed the book for a few moments, then gave his head a shake. Hiccup slid the book onto his desk. He reached for the journal.

"Hiccup!" Stoick's voice rattled the house, Toothless grunted in annoyance. "Have you picked the toy yet?"

Hiccup grabbed a teddy bear from the box at random. "Yeah, dad!"

He slipped the box beneath his desk and bounded down the stairs.

"May he sleep in eternal peace." Hiccup bowed his head reverently as his father ended his eulogy. He looked to Toothless, looking uncomfortable in the white sash Stoick was making him wear, and nodded. His dragon incinerated the bear.

Hiccup watched the thing go in bluebell flames, labored sobbing filling his ears. He raised his head to the cliffside.

Wait a moment... Who was that?

Along the edge of the cliff, Hiccup just barely registered a white figure pressed against the horizon.

It looked to be a boy about Avic's age, although he looked dreadfully thin. His hair and skin were a pale gray color, his tunic was bleached a dirty white. The figure didn't move, he just glared harshly at Hiccup through a fearsome set of yellow eyes.

"Dad?" Hiccup whispered, not taking his eyes off the edge. "Do you see that?"

Stoick raised his eyes to the horizon, but shook his head subtly. Hiccup returned his gaze back to the cliff.

But the figure was gone.


End file.
